Are you laughed at, are you scorned? Do they gaze at you and giggle to each other as you pass by? Do they despise you because you are mis-shapen, because you are awkward, because you are peculiar, because you fail in everything you do—and you know it is true?

Do you go to your chamber and hide yourself and think that no one thinks of you, or when they do only with contempt?

My child, there is One that not only thinks of you, but who cannot get on at all without you.

* * * * *

Are you alone in the world?

Have you sinned? have you a terrible secret within you which must out, yet you dare not reveal it?

Have you a face so disfigured that no one will look straight in your eyes?

Have you a mortal disease? do you feel the beating pulse of it in the dead of the night? At midday when the passers by go to and fro in the bright sunshine, do you feel the shadowy call of it to another world?

Are you tormented with inordinate clutching lusts which you dare not speak? are you nearly mad with the sting of them, and nearly mad with terror lest they should betray you?

My child, there is One who understands perfectly. There is nothing betrayed, and there is nothing to betray.

* * * * *

It is all straightforward.

There is no fraction of your days, your body, your thoughts, your passions, which has not deliberately and calmly been prepared—and which shall not deliberately and calmly be removed again when it has played its part.

There is no prejudice here, or weakness or self-righteousness, nor any apartness at all;

You are included, and all that is done and felt by you is done and felt at the same instant by not you;

Whatever you are and whatever you do, there is One who will and does look you candidly in the face, and understands you.

* * * * *

You may recoil from that gaze; but if you learn to encounter and return it (whether in one or many lifetimes) you will see that from it at length all secret terrors, shams, disfigurements, death itself, vanish away;

And you will not only not be alone in the world, but you will be a sovereign lord over the world.